Defence Closes on Pirate Bay Trial's Final Day

It was the defence’s turn in the final days of the Pirate Bay trial to present its closing statements.

To no one’s surprise, representation of the Pirate Bay emphasized once again that it believes its website operation is completely legal.

Jonas Nilsson, representing Fredrik Neij of the Pirate Bay, said in a Local story, “The prosecutor has said that it is not the technology that is on trial, but it is Pirate Bay's technology and how it is used that renders it permissible.”

The Pirate Bay argues that it has no direct hand in the spread of copyrighted material that may appear on its site.

“It is a completely legal technology that is offered by The Pirate Bay,” Nilsson argued. “It is an open site where users themselves upload content. There is certainly a lot of copyrighted material but this is an internet problem, not a Pirate Bay problem.”

While the prosecution maintained that it’s not the technology that’s on trial, but rather how it is used by the Pirate Bay, the defence stands firm on its views that it is doing no wrong.

“Bit torrent technology can be used for both legal and illegal means on Pirate Bay in the same way as by Google or MySpace. That someone at The Pirate Bay has a cocky attitude or certain political standpoint is not sufficient to issue a guilty verdict,” Nilsson added.

Next in the defence line up was Ola Salomonsson, representing Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, believes that the prosecution overestimated the net profits of the Pirate Bay. The prosecution said in its closing statements that it places net profits at around 10 million kronor ($1.1 million), but Salomonsson said the revenue is closer to 700,000 kronor ($75,700).

Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin commented that the prosecutors failed to produce a link between material downloaded from the Pirate Bay and the loss of licensed sales, and should free the website from paying damages.

Finally, Per E Samuelson, lawyer for Carl Lundström, posed that the prosecution had failed to prove the individual criminals charges against the four defendants, but instead focused on the Pirate Bay’s operations as a whole. Samuelson also said that the service provided by the Pirate Bay is a legal one, but it’s just the users who choose to misuse it. He also likened it to taking action against car makers for problems that might happen on the road.

The court wrapped for the day after announcing that a verdict is due April 17, 2009.

Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.